Ari Ne'eman and the "Bitchplz" moment

Once again life has sucked me up and spit me up. I have been dealing with a lot issues including gender identity and dating a new man and I have honestly neglected this blog. So I am gonna try to at least draw something or post Drakkhani stuff just to keep it active.

Now this weekend was completely mind boggling. Thanksgiving itself was rather simple and the Friday after wards was more volunteer work and having a really heavy conversation with Dave. Saturday was when Ari arrived in C-bus I hanged out with him and Melanie, Nick was there. Despite the fact dad decided to go on an abusive drunken rant later that night. The weekend was highly enjoyable (oh and there was the melt down at the pizza party forgot about that)

Did I mention that I have been going through some stressful and mindblowing changes?

No?

Anyway...Monday was Ari's talk on Neuro-D. I played helper monkey and help with setting up and closing down and generally assisting Cindy Selfe and Mel (cus dats how I roll). I was looking forward to the lecture and the discourse that followed. That's until a coward showed up in the midst of all of this. There was a paper called "Neurodiversity: Treatable with early detection" I was fuming but Ari decided this was excellent debate material and had it up with him. The paper was actively protesting ASAN's socio-ethics. While I was irritated, I was more frustrated that he came and left.

Coward.

Fortunately one of the English rhetoric students decided to cut it down using logic and rhetoric. Nicely done Pat.

The lecture went smoothly and there was some wonderful questions (I asked how is ASAN and the NeuroD community going to include those that are non-verbal and classically Autistic in the debate and participate with their community) however there was definitely a "bitchplz" moment. The president of autspks decided to hog the Q/A section. She was accusatory and loud and had no regard for everyone else in the room. Then she totally pulled a "LOOKIT IMMA HERO" with asking us that if we have spent time with a severely autistic boy.

Oh no she didn't

So this is to the attention whoring martyr in the back.

Dear AutSpks minion,

How dare you. How dare you disrespect the adults in Denny Hall by your inappropriate and obnoxious behavior. And how dare you strip the dignity of the classically autistic boy you spoke of by using him like a poker chip. I was frankly disgusted. Guess wheat Barbie, I have been with autistic and developmentally delayed adults in diapers. Unlike you I don't shame him or her for having a tool to use. I have also been with autistic teens that are suicidal and had to talk one down from killing himself. Another from running away as well. Both were victim of harassment. So yeah I can play the selfless hero bid too.

However, Where were you when they need your help? Where were you when I needed your help? When I was sitting in the bus being verbally and sexually harassed. Where were you and your champions for autists? When we desperately needed tools to survive every day when we cry out to be heard and have our voices counted? Or are you just in it for the cookies and punch?

You're not a fucking hero. Stop lauding yourself as one. You don't want to help autists you just want to make your resume look good.

Fuck you
Bard.

Cure for Sale

Sorry I haven't been posting a whole lot there has been a whole lot of change as of late and I just haven't had the energy to post something. However now that I have an hour before work I decided to do some catch up.

The funny thing about parents especially those that have the "cure now" mindset, is that money is no object. The will buy anything as long as it's claimed to cure this or this. Humans are rather gullible huh? However I had a did have bit of serendipitous moment the other day or week rather, proving that people are not so easily swayed.

Craiglist is like the Russian roulette of ads, you don't know where the bullet is. However I saw an ad about a family looking for someone to play with their autistic daughter, lets call her Tanya. I read the ad and it looked plausible enough so I called the father and we arranged a few thing. I had a friend drive me to friggin Newark for my first therapy session with Tanya. The apparently use another form of therapy called "Son-Rise". This kind of therapy isn't instructive but has a Montessori feel to it. Child led and all. It mentions that you are suppose to praise the child for eye contact as well as join in with the child as he or she stims. The pamphlet notes that the therapy suggests you join the child in their world. Which seems to be more of a "pos-autive" concept. I was on board with that and I was also eager to do this program with Tanya.

The first session was pretty tense. Tanya didn't know I was coming (oooh lose a point parents)so she was tense, I could feel it. She was also really high energy but so am I so I kept up with her. Over all the first session was about getting to know who I am and what my boundaries are. She figured out fast that I am not the kind of person that break easily (kid tough for your enjoyment), in the end we played connect four and we seem to made our own kind of connection the only downside was the fact she was upset when I touched her barbies and dolls (my bad) she was still upset at me for it. I have feeling that she is gonna be holding this grudge for a while...bummer.

Overall, I found this session to be different from most experiences with pro-cure parents (how do I know they are pro-cure? They want their child completely off the autistic spectrum though this therapy....uh yeah...good luck with that) Hopefully if I don't say anything about human rights, socio-ethics, neurodiversity that this could totally be a long term volunteer gig.

Into Curbie hell I go